Why Do Children Abuse Robots?

We found that children sometimes abuse a social robot in a hallway of a shopping mall. They spoke bad words, repeatedly obstructed the robot's path, and sometimes even kicked and punched the robot. To investigate why they abused it, we conducted a field study, in which we let visiting children freely interact with the robot, and interviewed when they engaged in a serious abusive behavior including physical contacts. In total, we obtained valid interviews from twenty-three children over 13 days of observations. They are aged between five and nine. Adults and older children were rarely involved. We interviewed them to know whether they perceived the robot as human-like others, why they abused it, and whether they thought that the robot would suffer from their abusive behavior. We found that 1) the majority of the children abused because they were curious about the robot's reactions or enjoyed abusing it while considering it as human-like, and 2) about half of the children believed in the capability of the robot to perceive their abusive behaviors.